Tag Archives: England

Well here I am. Home. I am officially home. I am now neither Homesick nor Heatstruck (Any ideas for a new blog name, folks? Answers on the back of a postcard…). I am not permitted to complain about the British weather in any way ever again – either directly or implicitly – for the rest …

Where do you go on holiday when you already live in the middle of a sun-sea-and-sand holiday destination? The answer is, somewhere just a little bit different… Like Norfolk. In November. As bleak as that may sound to some of you, this holiday had plenty of sun, sea and sand, just not the holiday brochure …

I am about to head home again for a week of British autumn and, as I pack my suitcase full of thermal undies and attempt to zip it closed (having first removed the dozing cat from within), I am reminded of the last time I packed my bags for a flight – back home in …

A Homesick and Heatstruck Book Review Sunday Times writer, Matt Rudd, has quite selflessly spent the last couple of years loitering around grubby motorway service stations, dodgy B&Bs and East Anglian dogging hotspots in order to write this splendid book (at least that was his excuse…). Just like Homesick and Heatstruck and many of my lovely …

Everyone who moves abroad expects a certain amount of what is known as ‘culture shock’: the feeling of being disorientated by the fundamental differences that surround you. All the things you have been conditioned to accept as ‘normal’ are, in fact, far from normal in your new home; your brain has to totally rewrite the …

I found it hard to write about being back home while I was actually there. Like a painter sitting too close to my subject, I lacked perspective and context. Much of my writing about England is, of course, idealised, romanticised nonsense, and it’s very difficult to romanticise something when it’s right there in front of …

In a way we should be grateful for the current horse-meat scandal, shouldn’t we. It has made us think a bit more about the things we do and don’t want to eat and just how much we are prepared to pay for good food. A lot of people have started to question the ethics surrounding …

I’m feeling the need for a post-Christmas walk. Traditionally, my family head out for a long walk on Boxing Day or the day after “to blow the cobwebs away” (a lovely fairy-tale of a metaphor which suggests that, like Sleeping Beauty, we have inadvertently been colonised by arachnids whilst hibernating). After a few days of …

One of the happiest places out here (and possibly on the entire planet) is Global Village. I suppose one could describe it as a sort of cultural theme park (I know that doesn’t sound fun, but bear with me). Surrounded by desert, a twenty minute drive from the city, it consists of many brightly decorated …

It has been drawn to my attention (by my no doubt well-intentioned husband) that this patriotic expatriate’s descriptions of home are somewhat distorted by sentimentality, and that I fail to present a fair or objective case. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I stand accused of wearing rose-tinted glasses when it comes to my reflections …

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Homesick and Heatstruck isn’t just the bewildered wittering of a British woman who inexplicably finds herself living in the Middle East (although it is that too), it’s also a ponderous blog about the nature of 'home' and being somewhere other. This is a pseudo-philosophical journal of my quest to thwart my sadness and silliness and embrace my new home... I hope you enjoy it. Please do leave a comment - and come back again soon.

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